Spec Plant mild. iii. 2174. Cl. 19. Ord. 2. Syngenesia Supernua. Nat. ord. Compositae. G. 1517. Receptacle chaffy. Seed down none, or a membranaceous margin. Calyx hemispherical, nearly equal. Florets of the ray more than five. * With a colourless or white ray. Species 15. A. nobilis. Common Chamomile. Med. Bot. Sd edit. 47'.

t.19. Smith, Flor. Brit. 904. -- 25. A. Pyrethrum. Pellitory of Spain. Med. Pot. 3d edit. 50. t. 20.

1. Anthemis nobilis.1

Officinal. Anthemidis Flores, Edin. Anthemis, Lond. Anthemis nobilis, Flores, Dub. Chamomile Flowers.

Syn. Camomille Romaine (F.), Roemische hamiller (G.), Romische Kamille (Dutch), Romerske Kamulblomster {Dan.), Romerske Kamillblommer (Swed.), Camomilla Romana (I.), Manzanilla de Botera ( S.), Marcella Romana (Portug.), Chamaindoopo (Tarn.), Baboeneh (Pers.), Ehdaklmerza (Arab.).

This species of Anthemis is an indigenous perennial plant, growing in dry pastures, and flowering in August and September. The greater part of the chamomile, however, which is medicinally used, is cultivated by the growers of physical plants.2 The roots are woody, fibrous, and spreading: the stems trailing, about a span in length, foliaceous and downy: the leaves verticillately bipinnate, the pinnae distant, and the leaflets small, threadlike, sharp, generally cleft into three segments, and pubescent; odorous, and of a pale green colour. The flowers are on solitary, terminal, unifloral, naked, striated, hairy peduncles. The calyx is common to all the florets, hairy, with broad membranaceous edges; the disc is yellow and convex; the florets of the radius white, spreading, long, and somewhat elliptical, three-toothed, and turned down; and -the seed obscurely crowned.

Discoridis.

Thcophrasti.

2 Much of what is brought to the London market is grown about Mitcham, in Surrey. The soil best adapted for it is a dry sandy loam. A wet summer weakens the flavour of the flowers.-Stevenson s Survey of Surrey, 379.

Both the single and the double-flowered varieties are culti-vated; but as the sensible qualities of the flower reside chiefly in the disc florets, the single kind should be preferred; and as these qualities are also stronger before the tubular florets are blown, the flowers ought to be then picked, and carefully dried for use. Those which are large are to be preferred; and the cultivated is to be preferred to the wild kind.

Qualities.-The whole of the plant is odorous. The smell of the flowers is strong and fragrant-; their taste bitter and aromatic, with a slight degree of warmth; both the odour and the taste are extracted by water and alcohol. By distillation with water they yield a small quantity of a blue, or greenish-blue volatile oil1, which becomes yellow when kept, and on which the odour and much of the stimulant powers of the plant seem to depend. Hot water takes up nearly one fourth of the weight of the dry flowers, and when the infusion is evaporated, a bitter extractive matter and a small portion of resin remain. The active principles, therefore, of chamomile flowers are supposed to be bitter extractive, resin, and volatile oil: but in treating them in the same manner as black pepper for procuring Piperina, I have obtained a notable quantity of resinoid, to which, chiefly, I ascribe the active antiperiodic properties of chamomile flowers.

Medical properties and uses.-Chamomile flowers are tonic, antispasmodic, and slightly anodyne; yet when a strong infusion of them is taken in a tepid state, it proves powerfully emetic. When given in substance, finely powdered, united with opium and astringents, if the bowels be easily affected, they have been successfully used for the cure of intermittents2; and have been quaintly termed " the cinchona of the ancients."3 Dios-corides recommended the powdered flowers to be administered to ward off the fever; and frictions with the oil were employed for the same purpose by Nechepsam, an Egyptian physician. The infusion in combination with ginger, or other aromatics, and the alkalies, is an excellent stomachic in dyspepsia, chlorosis, gout, flatulent colic, and chronic debility of the intestinal canal.1 It is also useful in dysentery, when diarrhoea is not present. The tepid strong infusion is a ready emetic, and is often employed to promote the operation of other emetics. By coction in water the essential oil is dissipated: chamomile flowers, therefore, ought never to be ordered in decoctions.

Externally they are used as fomentations in colic, intestinal inflammation, and to phagedenic ulcers; and their infusion is also found to be a useful addition to emollient anodyne glysters in flatulent colic, and in irritations of the rectum producing tenesmus. The dose of the powdered flowers is from gr. x. to 3j. twice or thrice a day.

1 The quantity obtained is about 3 jss. from 1 cwt. of the flowers. Brandes Manual. When the same water was used successively on lb. xij. of the flowers, Hayne procured 3x. 3v. 55 gr. of the oil from lb. 108. of flowers.

2 Morton's celebrated powder was composed of one scruple of chamomile flowers, ten grains of salt of wormwood, and ten grains of calx of antimony. It was given every sixth hour.

3 Traite Therapeuthpic, p»r. A. Troupeau, vol. i. par. '3U0.

Officinal preparations.-Decoctum Anthemidis nobilis, E. D Decoct. Malvae comp. L. Infusum Anthemidis, L. Infusum Cha-mcemeli, D. Extractum Anthemidis, E. D. Oleum Anthemidis, L.

2. Anthemis Pyrethrum.2

Officinal. Pyrethri radix, Lond. Edin. Anthemis pyre.

thrum; radix, Dub. Pellitory root.

Syn. Pyrethre(.F.), Bertram Wurtzel; Zahn wurtzel ( G. Dutch, Dan. Swed'.), Zebne Ziele (PoZ.), Piretro (Ital.)r Anthemis pelitri (S.), Akakracarum (Tam.), Akurkurha (A.), Akkaraputta (Cyng.).

This is a perennial plant, a native of the Levant, Barbary, and the south of Europe. It is sometimes cultivated in Britain?; flowering from June to July. The root is long, tapering, about the thickness of a finger, with a pale brownish-yellow cuticle, sending off several lateral fibres; and throwing up many trailing stems, more commonly simple and unifloral than branching. The leaves are doubly pinnate, with narrow linear segments of a pale green colour. The flowers are large, with the florets of the radius white on the upper, and purple on the under side, and those of the disc yellow. In form they resemble the flowers of Anthemis nobilis.

Pellitory root is brought into this country from the Levant, and the coast of Barbary, packed in bales. It is frequently mixed with other roots, from which, however, it is easily distinguished.

Qualities.-The dried root, as we receive it, is inodorous. When chewed it appears at first insipid, but after a few seconds excites a glowing heat, and a pricking or thrilling sensation on the tongue and lips, which remains for ten or twelve minutes. The pieces break with a short resinous fracture; the transverse section presenting a thick brown bark studded with black shining points, and a pale yellow radiated interior. The pungency appears to depend on a fixed oil, which is deposited in vesicles in the bark. M. Gautier describes it as solid, having a reddish colour and strong odour.1 It is completely extracted by alcohol and sulphuric ether.

1 Selle's celebrated Pulvis Ecphracticus consisted of equal parts of chamomile flowers, rhubarb, carbonate of potassa, magnesia, sulphur, and oleo-saccharum of fennel-Selli lib, de Cur. Stom. Morb. vol. i. p. 131. (quoted in Med. Rep. vol. i.)

Dioscoridis.

2 It was cultivated in England by Lobcl in 1570.

Medical properties and uses.-Pellitory root possesses powerful stimulant properties. Its chief use is as a sialagogue, to stimulate the excretories of the salivary glands, and excite an increased flow of saliva; by which inflammations and congestions of the neighbouring parts are relieved. Hence it has been found useful when chewed in some kinds of headach, apoplexy, chronic ophthalmia, rheumatic affections of the face, and toothach; and by its direct stimulus in paralysis of the tongue and muscles of the throat.